Chapter 16
Sixteen
Ashock of white hair clouds my vision, the alluring whisper of that woman’s voice lilting through my mind…
“Come to me, Octavia. You’re so close now…”
She reaches out her hand to me, and this time I don’t hesitate before I take it. But the second our fingertips touch, I’m launched into an endless void of black, falling, falling…
A bone-deep weariness envelops me as I rouse myself from the fog-addled weight of my unconsciousness, my skin slick with sweat from my dream.
I try to breathe deep to slow my heartrate, but as the events of the last few days slowly return to me, it only increases as they unfold vividly through my mind.
A knock at my bedroom door jerks me from the chaos of my mind and I slide out of bed, wincing at the pain that courses through my body as I move.
I’ve overdone it, I can feel that now my ring has lost its power.
All this running around the last few days has come back to bite me, and I limp to the door, silently cursing myself for my carelessness.
Stryx stands at the other side when I open it, concern etched across her face as she looks me over.
“You’re in pain,” she states, reaching out for my ring, but I swiftly draw my hand back and shake my head.
“Your power is too low–”
“It doesn’t take much,” she insists, grabbing my hand a little more forcefully and running her fingers across the ring before I can stop her.
The runes glow once more as the remains of her magic spills into it, and my shoulders relax as my body releases all its tension and my bones and tendons return to their proper positions.
“Thank you,” I breathe, feeling guilty for using up the last of her magic, though I can’t deny the relief it has given me.
She smiles warmly, brushing her thumb across my hand before releasing it and holding up a piece of parchment. My heart starts to thunder as I grab it, but when I turn it over, the handwriting is not the usual blue cursive that haunts me, but Xavier’s clumsy black scrawl.
“He wants you to come to the morgue, with an actual invite this time,” she chuckles, though her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. I study her, and I realise how tense her shoulders are, how rigid she’s holding herself, and I curse myself for not seeing it straight away.
“Are you okay? After yesterday, I mean?”
She nods with a small smile. “Yes, I’m okay. It’ll just take some time for me to get used to the idea that there are other people out there who know about me now.”
“You don’t trust Xavier?” I ask. The question has been burning through my head since her reaction to him yesterday.
“I do,” she answers quickly. “I just…I don’t know. Maybe I should stay here today.”
I can’t agree more. “Yes, bringing you to the Division seems like a stupid risk after what happened yesterday. Maybe you can sit on the roof while I’m gone? If there are any gaps in the Veil you can recharge some of your magic?”
She nods enthusiastically before bounding off into the living space, leaving me to dress, but as I do, anxiety crawls its way back into my mind. Leaving her is the best thing to do right now, so why do I feel so uneasy about it?
“They brought in his body this morning,” Xavier says quietly, his expression grim as we stand side by side next to Cyril. “One of the other librarians found him after we left. No leads yet, but they’re investigating.”
The morgue is quiet, save for the faint drip of water somewhere deep in the stone walls.
I turn away silently and walk over to the two bodies I came here to see, both having been pulled out of their magically chilled hatches on my arrival.
They lay pale and slack under the lamplight and I walk between them, leaning in close to study them for anything I may have missed before.
I sense Xavier shuffling uncomfortably behind me, and after a few minutes, I can’t ignore it any longer.
“What?” I snap, a little more forcefully than I’d intended.
“Is she okay?” he murmurs, looking up at me as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I get the feeling Stryx isn’t happy about me knowing.”
I consider telling him of her unease, but a different thought suddenly occurs to me, and I try to bite back my smile.
“You know, if you want her to like you, you should buy her a mushroom.”
His eyebrow shoots up. “What?”
“Just trust me,” I laugh, but my smile drops quickly as I recall our conversation yesterday. “How’s Vesper?”
“Same as usual,” he grunts with a sad shrug.
I internally berate myself for not asking after her more often. “Can I help at all? I’d love to see her.”
“I’m sure she’d love that. I can take you when we’re finished here if you like?
” he says, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, so I quickly nod my agreement and take the hint, turning my attention back to the bodies.
I take my time inspecting them, but frustratingly, I don’t see anything new that stands out.
Those tattoos, however—the dark and curling ink that adorns both their wrists—refuse to stop drawing my eye.
My brow furrows as I gently run my finger over one.
“It’s on both of them,” I mutter, tracing the air just above the skin.
“They’re identical, even the numbers under the magpie.
They have to mean something to each other, or to whoever did this.
I asked around to see if anyone recognised it, but all I got were refusals to co-operate or threats.
This is too significant to be a coincidence, and given people’s reluctance to help, I think it could be a crucial lead. ”
Silence follows. Too much silence. I glance up.
Xavier isn’t studying the marks. He isn’t even looking at the bodies. He stands a step back, arms folded tightly across his chest, eyes a shade too careful as he looks at an apparently very interesting spot on the wall.
What are you hiding Xavier?
My stomach tightens. “You’ve seen this before,” I say slowly.
His jaw shifts. “Not exactly.”
I straighten, my eyes narrowing on him. “Don’t lie to me, Xavier. If you know something, you need to tell me. You told me before that you didn’t recognise it.”
He blows out a breath and rubs the bridge of his nose, avoiding my gaze. “Fine. I may have seen something like it years ago. On women–” His voice dips lower as red flushes his cheeks. “In a brothel.”
Well… that was unexpected.
My eyebrows shoot up. “A brothel?”
He nods once, clipped and tight. “Discreet place. One of those that thrives in the shadows of Aethermere. Some of the girls there had tattoos like these. Not all of them…just a few.”
My eyes narrow as the silence thickens between us, then a sly smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “A brothel, Xavier? I didn’t realise that was your, err…taste?”
His head snaps up, dark eyes flashing indignantly. “It isn’t like that. I was there on a case.”
“Oh, of course,” I say, my voice lilting with mock sympathy. I fold my arms and tilt my head. “Always the noble knight, swooping into the dens of sin purely for duty.”
He scowls at me. “It’s the truth.”
But I’m already laughing softly, shaking my head. “By the Veil, Xavier, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re hiding something. You sound exactly like one of those guilty husbands the wardens drag in at dawn.”
“I–” His shoulders tense as he looks away, the tips of his ears faintly red. I can’t help the laughter that bursts out of me, leaving me feeling light and unguarded for the first time in days.
“Gods, I needed that,” I chuckle, though my gaze lingers on the tattoo, and my smile quickly falls. “But if you really did see this tattoo there, it could mean there’s a connection between the murders and that brothel. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“No,” Xavier admits. “I don’t either.”
I let the silence stretch for a long moment, my mind racing. If the murders connect to the brothel, then we aren’t looking at random victims. This could be pieces of a much bigger pattern. One that Xavier clearly knows more about than he is letting on.
I catch his eye again, serious this time. “Right, I don’t care whether or not you were ‘just working a case’ there, that’s your business, but you’re going to tell me everything you remember. No more evasions.”
I’ve never heard a silence so thick, pressing against my ears as if even sound refuses to linger in a place so haunted by decay.
Xavier locks the heavy door behind us with a small key and says nothing as we stand in the empty hallway of his house.
The air inside is faintly sweet and cloying, like honey mixed with the sickroom musk of herbs and dying roses.
I follow him up a narrow stairwell, the wood polished to a mirror shine from years of obsessive care.
The house feels like a mausoleum dressed as a home, and I realise now why, despite our long friendship, he’s never invited me in here.
I can’t help but feel like I’m trespassing, to the point that I start to wonder if I shouldn’t have intervened in their predicament in the first place.
At the top floor, Xavier pauses before a door carved with a faint sigil that pulses once beneath his hand. He hesitates, before looking back at me with a grimace. “Vesper has good days,” he murmurs. “Today…may not be one.”
He pushes the door open and I slowly follow in behind him, my gaze immediately catching on the grand bed in the middle of the room, shrouded by a canopy of gauze.
The curtains glow faintly from the smog-filtered sunlight, casting an almost sacred glow over the young woman tucked into the sheets.
She’s still as beautiful as I remember, but now in that tragic, fragile way of those who have known pain too long; skin pale as crushed pearls, obsidian hair broken at the ends, her eyes flickering faintly like the light within her is fighting to stay alive.
Threads of runes crawl up her arms and neck, the faintly black veins of Riven’s curse winding beneath her skin.
I freeze at the sight, and for a heart-stopping moment, I can’t breathe.
“We were sixteen when it took hold,” Xavier says quietly, his voice flat with the kind of exhaustion that’s long ago bled into acceptance. “Riven wanted to make a point. He always does.”
Sixteen? I bury the hurt at him lying to me for so long as I move quietly to the bedside, my hand hovering above Vesper’s wrist. She’s practically a ghost of her former self. “This isn’t just a curse,” I growl. “It’s a slow execution.”
My heart lurches for my friends. I should’ve paid closer attention all these years, should’ve realised their suffering. I’ve always been so preoccupied with solving crimes for work, I’ve never thought to look too closely at my life outside of it. I feel like a fool.
Vesper’s eyelids flutter at our voices, her lips parting with effort. “Xavier…is that you?” Her voice is barely more than a breath, but when her eyes find mine she startles, eyes widening slightly, no recognition within them. “You’re the one he spoke about,” she whispers.
My stomach twists uncomfortably. “Who?”
“Riven,” Vesper murmurs. “Long ago, he said the white-haired girl would come. That she’d see what he’d done and hate him for it.”
She doesn’t realise it’s me.
My pulse spikes, fury burning in my chest like a struck match. “He knew I would come here?” I hiss, glancing sharply at Xavier. “How?”
Xavier shook his head, guilt and fear flickering across his face. “I don’t know. He just… he likes to speak in riddles.”
My eyes track back and forth between the pair, my brow furrowing. “Why has it affected her so badly, but you so little?”
He shrugs. “I’m honestly not sure, but it’s certainly worsened over time for both of us. I guess she’s just more perceptible to it.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“Just one,” he says, stepping closer. “An Echofae woman comes once a week to try to heal her.”
My gaze snaps to his. “An Echofae slave comes here?” Considering his mistrust for their people, I have to say it’s a slightly bewildering notion. “Who?”
He shakes his head with a grimace. “I don’t know. I’ve never met the woman, it was Vesper’s idea. She insists it’s helping her so I just leave them to it. I’ll take all the help I can get right now, regardless of my own feelings on the matter.”
Vesper coughs, a fleck of dark blood staining her lip—no. Not red, something darker, like ink. I wipe it away gently with a trembling hand. “Riven really did this to her? To all of you?” I ask, my voice hard. “He did this for what? To make you suffer?”
Xavier’s jaw clenches. “That’s what he does.”
I turn away and start pacing the room, my cloak brushing the marble floor like a shadow. “There has to be something to undo it. Some way to stop this.”
“There isn’t,” Xavier says, his voice low. “Not unless Riven releases it himself. And he never will.”
I spin on him, my mind blazing with ire. “Then I’ll make him.”
Vesper’s weak smile falters, but there is a spark of something almost like hope in her expression. “You’ll try?” she whispers.
I meet her gaze and nod once, fiercely. “I will.”
The room is silent again except for Vesper’s shallow breathing. I study her pallid, weak frame, and a frown crosses my face, despite my determination to help her.
“Why did he do this, Xavier? I don’t understand.”
I turn to him and he gives me a sad smile. “My parents committed many sins, Octavia. Though for which one our family is punished, it’s unclear.”
“You should have told me sooner.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “And what would you have done?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I’m certain Riven is connected to this case. I’ve never crossed paths with him before, and now suddenly he’s everywhere we go? He’s up to something and we are going to find out what, and when we do, we can use it against him as leverage.”
Xavier pulls me into a tight embrace, one I gladly cling to, despite my usual aversion to touching. When he pulls back, a smirk slowly breaks out across his face.
“Amen to that.”